a twig amid the uproar. John, glancing up as the
sergeant lifted his piece, spied the antlers of a bull-moose
spreading above an alder-clump across the stream. The tall brute had
come down through the _bois brule_ to drink, or to browse on the
young spruce-buds, which there grew tenderer than in the thick
forest; and for a moment moose and men gazed full at each other in
equal astonishment.

Barboux would have fired at once had not Menehwehna checked him with
a few rapid words. With a snort of disgust the moose turned slowly,
presenting his flank, and crashed away through the undergrowth as the
shot rang after him. Bateese and Muskingon had the canoe launched in
a second, and the whole party clambered in and paddled across.
But before they reached the bank the beast's hoofs could be heard
drumming away on the ridge beyond the swamp and the branches snapping
as he parted them.

Barboux cursed his luck. The two Indians maintained that the moose
had been hit. At length Muskingon, who had crossed the swamp, found
a splash of blood among the mosses, and again another on the leaves
of a wickup plant a rod or two farther on the trail. The sergeant,
hurrying to inspect these traces, plunged into liquid mud up to his
knees, and was dragged out in the worst of tempers by John, who had
chosen to follow without leave. Bateese and McQuarters remained with
the canoe.

Each in his own fashion, then, the trackers crossed the swamp,
and soon were hunting among a network of moose-trails, which
criss-crossed one another through the burnt wood. John, aware of his
incompetence, contented himself with watching the Indians as they
picked up a new trail, followed it for a while, then patiently harked
back to the last spot of blood and worked off on a new line. Barboux
had theories of his own, which they received with a galling silence.
It galled him at length to fury, and he was lashing them with curses
which made John wonder at their forbearance, when a call from the
river silenced him.

It came from Bateese. Bateese, who cared nothing for sport, had
paddled up-stream to inspect the next reach of the river, and there,
at the first ford, had found the moose lying dead and warm, with the
ripple running over his flank and his gigantic horns high out of the
water like a snag.

From oaths Barboux now turned incontinently to boasting. This was
his first moose, but he--he, Joachim Barboux, was a sportsman from
his birth. He stil